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Picture titles : how and why western paintings acquired their names
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Picture titles : how and why western paintings acquired their names

by Ruth Bernard Yeazell

This study explores how the practice of titling Western paintings developed from the Renaissance to the present day, analysing how these names shape the reception of art and the roles of artists, dealers, and curators in the process.

Accession 11854 ISBN 9780691165271 Publisher Princeton University Press
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Curated Derived
Art Critics Culture Economics Institutions Linguistics Painting Professions Social Sciences Writing
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position_updated_at
2026-06-03 16:41
orientation
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Hard Back
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G:N1:2 2 vertical
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G:N1:5 2 vertical
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Identity

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Picture titles : how and why western paintings acquired their names
vernon_id
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11854
vernon_slug
picture-titles-how-and-why-western-paintings-acquired-their-names-ruth-bernard-yeazell

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Descriptive

production_date
2015
object_type
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object_status
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brief_description
A picture's title is often our first guide to understanding the image. Yet paintings didn't always have titles, and many canvases acquired their names from curators, dealers, and printmakers--not the artists. Taking an original, historical look at how Western paintings were named, 'Picture titles' shows how the practice developed in response to the conditions of the modern art world and how titles have shaped the reception of artwork from the time of Bruegel and Rembrandt to the present. Ruth Bernard Yeazell begins the story with the decline of patronage and the rise of the art market in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as the increasing circulation of pictures and the democratization of the viewing public generated the need for a shorthand by which to identify works at a far remove from their creation.

Subjects & people

authors→ author (initial fill only)
Ruth Bernard Yeazell
tags→ tags
Art, Arts, Art -- Exhibitions, Landscape painting, Painting, Graphic arts, Art, Modern -- 20th century, Social sciences, Civilisation, Public institutions, Associations, institutions, etc., Museums, Rhetoric, Authorship, Economics, Industries, Art museums, Art & Language (Group), Conceptual art, Criticism, Art critics, Critics, Language and languages in art, Painting, Italian, Art patrons, Art patronage, Art and industry, Titles of works of art
subject_people
Steven Pinker (b.1954), Pablo Picasso (b.1881, d.1973), René Magritte (b.1898, d.1967), Jasper Johns (American, b.1930), Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, b.1606, d.1669), J. M. W. Turner (English, b.1775, d.1851), James Abbott McNeill Whistler (American, b.1834, d.1903), Jacques-Louis David (French, b.1748, d.1825), Gustave Courbet (French, b.1819, d.1877), Musée du Louvre
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Topics and Themes